MEUSIS Example: A Transboundary area in Europe is the Alpine one and 5 countries cover this area: Austria, Italy, France, Slovenia, Switzerland. As you may view in the following image, the extent is 1100 km longitudinal and 700 km latitudinal.

The Alpine Reference Grid can be considered as part of the European Inspire Grid System. For the Alpine Reference Grid example the following layers are used:

Country Boundaries

Eurasia Lakes

Reference Grid of 100km x 100km Cells

Reference Grid of 10km x 10km Cells

Reference Grid of 1km x 1km Cells

DEM 100m and Hill SRTM

Soil Erosion Grid of 1km x 1km Cells

The Alpine Reference Grid of 100km x 100km contains 11 x 7 = 77 cells of 100km each. The starting point (origin) is defined at (x,y) = (3.800.000 m, 2.200.000 m). Each cell is identified by a unique label. This label is a string consisting of two parts concatenated by a "_" ; the first part indicates the longitude of the lower left corner of the cell and the second part indicates the latitude of the lower left corner of the cell. The number of digits to indicate the longitude and latitude depends on the size of the cells within the file. Below, in the following 100km x 100km Alpine Refenence Grid the latitude and the longitude are indicated with 2 digits. Example the cell "38_22", indicates the cell with lower left corner at 3800000m lon and 2200000m lat ; The cell labeled "42_25" which includes Lago Maggiore has as a lower left corner at 4200000m lon and 2500000m lat.

The Alpine Reference Grid of 10km x 10km contains 110 x 70 = 7700 cells of 10km each. Each of the 100km cells contains 100 cells of 10km. Each of the 10km cells is identified by a unique label which consists of two parts(longitude, latitude) concatenated by a "_" ; Below, in the following 10km x 10km Alpine Refenence Grid the latitude and the longitude are indicated with 3 digits. Example the cell labeled "421_253" which is on the right of Lago Maggiore has as a lower left corner at 4210000m lon and 2530000m lat. The 100km cell "42_25" consists of 100 10km cells labeled as "420_250"(left down corner),"420_251", ..........."420_259"(left upper corner)............."42_259"(right upper corner).........."429_250" (right down corner).

The Alpine Reference Grid of 1km x 1km contains 1100 x 700 = 770000 cells of 1km each. Each of the 10km cells contains 100 cells of 1km and each of the 100km cells contains 10,000 cells of 1km. Each of the 1km cells is identified by a unique label which consists of two parts(longitude, latitude) concatenated by a "_" ; Below, in the following 1km x 1km Alpine Refenence Grid the latitude and the longitude are indicated with 4 digits.

The ideal MEUSIS is that the 100 cells of 1km are updating the 10km cell and more the 100 cells of 10km are updating the 100km cell. In the above mentioned hierarchical structure the borders of the of the 1km x 1km Alpine Reference Grid are matching perfectly the borders of the Soil Erosion Risk Assessment(PESERA) Grid converted to projection ETRS-LAEA. The hierarchical structure of the proposed Grid is perceived with interest by the soil community as it might be used as an up scaling framework for soil mapping at different resolutions.